Encyclopedia of society and culture in the ancient world ( PDFDrive ) 500

family: Egypt significant factor in the survival and resilience of most ancient crafts Aristocratic families had slaves as members In most cases, these slaves were bought and integrated into the family for the purpose of agricultural production Theoretically, slave owners had the power to kill or sacrifice them to the gods A female slave could be made a wife of her master, making the slave and her offspring free EGYPT BY KELLY-ANNE DIAMOND REED Ancient Egyptian society was structured around the family unit The purpose of marriage was procreation and maintaining the family Egyptian wisdom literature, or texts that contain instructions or philosophical dialogue, regularly speaks of a man prospering, establishing a house, finding a wife, and having children as ideal In the Pharaonic Period marriage is sparsely documented, with no mention of any formal ceremony that recognized marriage It is clear, though, that the idea of a household permeated society and that the woman entered into the household of the man From this point on, the man and woman lived together Very few texts testify to the idea of “giving a wife” in marriage, so a man may have found a wife in a variety of ways 449 Among royalty diplomatic marriages took place This arrangement either created an alliance between two separate kingdoms or indicated submission on the part of the ruler who provided the daughter Likewise, father-daughter and brother-sister marriages were common within the royal family as a way of preserving the bloodline and maintaining political power Evidence is more common for divorce than it is for marriage Marriage contracts, which concentrated on the property rights of each partner but did not, despite their name, comment on the ceremony of marriage, specified grounds for divorce These grounds included the wife’s infidelity or infertility, the man’s dislike of the wife, or his desire to marry another woman It is known that around 500 b.c.e a wife could initiate a divorce, possibly on the grounds of her husband’s infidelity It is not known whether the Egyptians knew the difference between impotence and infertility in men Regardless, women were always blamed for the inability to conceive a child Both men and women were able to remarry after a divorce Men belonging to the elite class, including royalty, could take more than one wife if they could afford to so and if the wives could contribute to the household Because most women could, by working either in the fields or with textiles, it may have been more profitable to have more than one wife Papyrus marriage contract between the priest Pagosh and Teteimhotep, from Assiut, Egypt, Ptolemaic Period, 172 b.c.e (© The Trustees of the British Museum)